“Tell me what you saw the night you encountered the Sinsar Dubh,” he repeated.

Straining in my skin, nearly suffocating myself with my attempts to resist, I spilled every detail, every last thought, every perception. From the humiliation of lying in that vile puddle in my pretty clothes, to the various forms the Book had taken, to the look it had given me, to my decision about how to track it. Then, to make things worse, I volunteered my entire “intervention” with Inspector Jayne.

“Don’t move,” he said, and I sat ramrod-straight in my chair, unable to even scratch my nose while he pondered his thoughts. There was violence in the room with us, a killing violence. I didn’t get it. What had I done to piss him off so much? He hadn’t been half this angry last night, and he’d had every opportunity to grill me forcibly then. He hadn’t. He’d just driven off.

“Where did you go today?”

Sweat dripping down my face, I told him that, too. I wanted to speak of my own free will, to call him every name in the book, to tell him we were through, he and I, and that I was the one who deserved answers, not him. But he’d sealed my lips with a command, and I could only answer what he asked.

“Did V’lane tell you anything?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, biting it off there. I’d obeyed the compulsion to the letter. I didn’t have to offer more.

“What did he tell you?”

“That the Lord Master was once a Fae, named Darroc.”

He snorted. “Old news. Did he tell you anything about me?”

Old news? He’d been sitting on information about the Lord Master that he hadn’t shared with me? And he got pissed at me for not telling him everything I knew? If he didn’t kill me when he was done with me, he was dead. He was a walking encyclopedia with a cover I couldn’t crack. Useless.

Dangerous. “No.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“No,” I gritted.

“Have you ever fucked him?”

“No,” I ground out. I’d never had two men more obsessed with what was happening in my sex life, or rather, not happening.

Some of the violence in the air abated.

My eyes narrowed. Was this it? The source of his rage? Was Barrons jealous? Not because he cared, but because he thought of me as a possession, his personal and private sidhe-seer, and there would be no other men’s erections interfering with her OOP detections?

He gave me a cold look. “I needed to know if you were Pri-ya. That’s why I asked.”

“Do I look Pri-ya?” I snapped. I had no idea what a Fae addict looked like, but I somehow doubted I was the Poster Girl for it. I figured them for something more like the Goth girls I’d seen hanging out at Mallucé’s vampire lair: pierced, tattooed, and heavily made-up, dressed in vintage clothing, mostly black.

He started, measured me a moment, then laughed. “Good for you, Ms. Lane! You’re learning.”

I started, myself, realized what I’d just done. I’d said something that hadn’t been an answer to a direct question! I tried to do it again, mentally forming the words, but I couldn’t force them out. I didn’t know how I’d done it in the first place.

“Who were you going to see the night you saw the Sinsar Dubh?”

Oh, no. This wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to know everything. “A guy that knew Alina,” I said between clenched teeth.

“Tell me his name.”

No, no, no. “Christian MacKeltar.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He exploded from his chair and glared down at me.

Since he’d used Voice, I was obligated to say, “No,” although I knew the question had been rhetorical. The killing violence was back, over a simple name. Why? What significance did Christian’s name have to him? Did he know him? Closing my eyes, I sought the sidhe-seer place in my head. It was no help. I still couldn’t speak. How could I feel so much power in that hot, alien part of my mind, yet find nothing there of use to me in this situation?

“How did you meet Christian MacKeltar?”

“He works at the ALD at Trinity. I met him when you sent me to pick up the invitation to the auction from his boss, but she wasn’t there.”

His nostrils flared. “He must be a recent hire. They’ve been spying on me.”

He hadn’t used Voice, nor had he asked a question, so I said nothing.

“Have the MacKeltars been spying on me?”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I said, “Yes.”

“Have you been spying on me, Ms. Lane?”

“As much as I can.”

“What have you learned about me?”

I went poking around in my head again but whatever place I was supposed to discover remained a mystery to me. Aware that I was digging my own grave, one spadeful of information at a time, I told him. That I knew he wasn’t human. That I knew he was impossibly old. That I’d watched him step out of the Unseelie Sifting Silver he kept in his study, carrying the savagely brutalized corpse of a woman. That, like the Shades, the demons in there had fled his path.

He laughed. As if it was some kind of joke that I knew all his dark secrets. He didn’t try to explain or justify one bit of it. “And I didn’t think you could keep your own counsel. You knew these things and never said a word. You’re becoming interesting. Are you working with the MacKeltars against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with V’lane against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with the sidhe-seers against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with anyone against me?”

“No.”

“Where do your loyalties lie, Ms. Lane?”

“With myself,” I shouted. “With my sister! With my family, and screw all of you!”

The violence in the room abated.

After a moment, Barrons resumed his seat in the chair across from me, absorbed my painfully stiff posture, and smiled without humor. “Very well, Mac. Relax.”

Mac? He’d called me Mac? I fought for breath. “Am I about to die?” I wheezed. “Are you going to kill me?”

He looked startled. I’d done it again. Spoken of my own will. He’d released my body, but not his hold on my mind and mouth. I could still feel it, compelling me, hurting me.

Then he snorted. “I tell you to relax and you think I’m going to kill you? You’re crippled by a woman’s illogic.” He added as a seeming afterthought, “You may speak freely now.”

The stranglehold on my throat was gone, and for a few moments I simply enjoyed the sensation of breath moving in and out of my lungs, of knowing my tongue was once again my own. I could feel V’lane’s name, piercing the meat of it, and realized that from the moment Barrons had used Voice to bind my will, it had somehow faded, receded beyond my reach. “I am not. The only two times you ever called me Mac is when I was near death. Since there’s no other threat around right now, you must be about to kill me. It’s perfectly logical.”

“I didn’t call you Mac.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I called you Ms. Lane.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

I clenched my jaw. Sometimes, despite Barrons’ eternal old-world sophistication, and my glamour-girl cool, he and I very nearly devolve into childish fights. Frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s petunia what he’d called me, and wasn’t about to sit here and argue about it. I was free, and furious. I exploded from my chair, launched myself at him, and slammed both palms against his chest. I put every ounce of determination to Null into my hands that I could summon. My sidhe-seer core blazed like a small fiery sun in my head. Was he or wasn’t he Unseelie?

I hit him so hard that his chair toppled backward and we went skidding across the floor toward the fireplace, stopping inches from the grate. If he froze at all, it was for so brief a moment that I couldn’t decide if I’d nulled him, or merely startled him into a brief second of immobility.